Central and Eastern European Software Engineering Conference Gains Momentum

The 5th Central and Eastern European Software Engineering Conference in Russia (CEE-SECR 2009), the key software event in CEE region, was held in Moscow at the end of October. What initially was positioned as a Russia focused event back in 2005, gradually evolved into a large-scale regional software developers’ conference attended by over 500 software experts from 15+ countries.

The conference is an excellent meeting point for software professionals from Central and Eastern Europe and Russia providing them with an opportunity to share valuable experience and best practices, discuss challenges and innovations, to communicate with colleagues, find partners and clients.

This year the agenda, to say the least, was full. Keynote speakers from Google, IBM, Microsoft, Tibco and other companies covered such hot topics as the synergistic effect of Agile-CMMI combination, Enterprise Security Assessment Sharing system, best practices in software architecture, including Total Architecture approach, new content-based communication services, and testing software. Russia and Eastern Europe at large are nowadays listed among the most favorable and fastest growing software outsourcing spots gaining increasing attention of Western clients.

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Survey: IT Development Budgets On the Rise

According to the latest IDC survey, IT development projects are on the rise in 2009.

With more than 6,000 respondents surveyed, there’s a pronounced tendency that IT budgets are increasing this year and the overall IT landscape looks more promising. Respondents were senior business leaders and software development professionals from independent software vendors, enterprises with more than 500 employees, SMEs, and other organizations for which software development was a key business focus or priority.

The major takeaways from the survey read:
• 38% of companies are outsourcing "some software development" to India, China, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries;
• 71% of respondents said new product or software development was a "top priority" for their organization;
• 51% of respondents said "saving money" was a top priority for their organization;
• 42% of respondents said agile methodologies were their software development models of choice,
• 36% of companies use Capability Maturity Model Integration as their process maturity and quality model;
• 62% of respondents focus their software development efforts on enterprise applications;
• 51% of respondents focus their software development efforts on Web-based applications;
• 42% of organizations execute software customization and integration in different systems and environments.

Rona Shuchat, director of Application Outsourcing Services at IDC, sums up: "During this economic recession, the competitive application outsourcing arena has become even more fierce as customers push for lower cost and improved operational efficiencies. Flexible, consistent delivery and management models, alongside scalability, reliability and high performance, will be critical as new hosting models become viable alternatives to the enterprise."

Source: Integration Developer News

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Agile Outsourcing: Taking the Lead!

Agile methodologies such as agile software development and continuous process improvement are considered more suitable for software development outsourcing than traditional ones. Now they are seen as critical factors for software projects success and customer satisfaction. Why is it so? Let’s see.

Methodology Fit. For any outsourcing or offshoring company, agile methodologies are more suitable than traditional ones. Agile software development and continuous process improvement offer the chance to make fine adjustments continuously on both sides to accommodate for these differences. Traditional methodologies in software development will almost always lead to fixed price contracts since the buyers of those services will insist upon it.

Bridging Communication Gaps. Even apart from the differences in language between the United States and India or the United States and the Philippines, imagine the differences in time zones, culture and work habits. Agile software development ensures that frequent releases bridge these communication gaps quickly.

Perfection Is an Iterative Process. When two disparate organizations work together, success can be achieved only iteratively with as many feedback loops as you can design into the effort as possible. Agile software development and continuous process improvement offer both buyers and sellers of outsourcing services the opportunity to achieve perfection iteratively.

Building Expertise. Service providers can move to using agile software development methodologies or billing customers on a transaction basis only if the sellers of these services aren't just executing a project or process but building expertise in that area.

Responsiveness to Change. Software requirements change over time. Business processes are evolving everyday due to competitive pressures as well as changes in the law. Agile methodologies are needed in outsourced software development to keep the development effort synchronized with changes in requirements.

Building Longer Term Partnerships. Building a partnership with your software development service provider makes it easier and better the next time you have another major software development effort come up.

Building Quality. Agile methodologies achieve something that is counterintuitive at first glance. You build things faster, but by doing so, you ensure better quality. Agile methodologies address serious problems in ways humans communicate. They do this by allowing faster and quicker feedback cycles so that course corrections are made as soon as possible.


Source: Global Services

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